


Curtain Call

by wonder_womans_ex



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Actor!Sirius, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Muggle, Aroace Regulus Black, BAMF Lily Evans, Bisexual Sirius Black, Desi James Potter, I am doing the lord's work by giving Lily Evans a lip ring, I have a love-hate relationship with these tags, I have an OC and her name is Danya, I listened to When You Were Mine by cyndi lauper like seventy times while writing this, I pinky promise, I truly am evil, I'll fix them eventually I promise, I'm Sorry, James Potter listens to the monkees in this fic, Lucky me, M/M, Post-Break Up, Sirius Black-centric, and it shows, completely and totally done with life!remus, could I have a moment of silence for the bags under these characters' eyes, everyone is canadian in this because I say so, except for the plot, he/they Regulus Black, i own nothing, it's mostly angst rn because that's how I roll but there will be fluff eventually, many grammatical errors, no editing we die like men, normalize being friends with your ex, pansexual james potter, plot holes, remus doesn't use labels and that is wonderful and I support him, so many plot holes, though I am both a writer and an actor I apparently know nothing about writing OR acting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:28:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28785702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonder_womans_ex/pseuds/wonder_womans_ex
Summary: 'Take the class,' they said. 'It will be good for you,' they said. 'It will improve who you are as an actor,' they said.Evidently, they forgot to mention a few things.Like the fact that Sirius can't write.Or that his ex boyfriend is the one who has to try and teach him how.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 19
Kudos: 46





	1. Act One, Scene One

Sirius finds him with his head in his hands, back against the brick wall of the information and technology building. He stops for a moment, wondering if he should go over there—ask what’s wrong, or offer assistance—then decides against it. 

He is Sirius Black, and Sirius Black does not help other people. 

Not anymore. 

So he continues on with his day. He walks past the crying boy into the theatre building, pausing by the bulletin board to pull a phone number slip from the bottom of a flyer that advertises free physics tutoring. It tears off at the area code. 

Great—just what this day needs. 

It gets significantly worse when he pushes through the stage door and bumps into Danya, who’s lurking behind the wings, black Abbey Road shirt blending in with the curtains. She smiles at him brightly. 

“Hi, Sirius,” she says. “I was just leaving. I could wait up, if you want—fancy getting lunch together?” 

There is exactly one good thing about Danya Lent, and that is the fact that she doesn’t giggle, or tuck her hair behind her ear, or look up at him through her eyelashes. She talks to him like he’s a regular person, not some sort of movie star. She’s not just attracted to his looks—she genuinely likes him. 

But Sirius just broke up with Remus. He’s not looking for a relationship. And Danya isn’t the kind of person he’d be interested in dating, anyway. She reminds him too much of James. 

“Sorry, Dan,” Sirius tells her, glancing towards where Professor Fischer is sitting at the piano centre stage. “I’ll probably be here for a while; I don’t want to keep you waiting.”

Make that two good things about her—she can take a hint. Danya just nods and grins. “All right. I’ll see you around, I guess!” 

And then she’s gone.

Sirius clears his throat before approaching the professor, startling the older man out of whatever trance he’s in. Fischer’s eyebrows shoot up comically when he sees Sirius, and he pats the spot next to him invitingly. 

Sirius steps forward, sliding onto the piano bench. He absentmindedly plucks a note—D#, he thinks, but it’s been years since he quit piano lessons—and waits. 

“I was quite impressed by your performance yesterday,” Fischer says, and Sirius’s heart sinks. Professor Fischer throws around words of praise like they’re buy-one-get-two-free, and ‘quite impressed’ does not fall high on the sliding scale of compliments. 

“Thank you, sir,” he says anyway, because he knows better than to say anything else. 

But apparently the professor isn’t done yet. “I had been wondering,” he begins, fingers dancing over the keys, yet never making a sound, “Whether you’d given any thought to that course I suggested.”

“What, the creative writing one?” Sirius’s voice, though he tries hard for it not to, gives away his surprise. He’d assumed that Fischer had been recommending the free creative writing seminar to everyone in his class, not him specifically. He’s never had a way with words—not ones that weren’t already scripted out for him, at least. 

“Yes, that one. It’s not like most of the courses we offer here—it’s led entirely by alumni of the university, and most of them are very good writers. I think it would be good for you.”

_ Now  _ Sirius is intrigued. “In what way?”

“You’e an incredible actor, Mr. Black, but what you struggle with is finding the purpose behind the words.”

(Sirius thinks he has purpose down to a science, but he’s not about to say that to Professor Fischer.)

“Oh, sure, you know what the characters are feeling and why. You have a way with the people you play. But what you lack is the concept of an author.

“I’ve had an eye on you for a while, and what I’ve found is this: if Eloise is walking down the street, you know why she is walking down the street. But you do not know why the person writing the script made the conscious  _ choice _ to have her walk down the street. You get so caught up in the fiction that you forget it is based in fact. Do you understand this?”

Professor Fischer’s accent gets more pronounced the more passionate he is, and right now he sounds as if he would be right at home on the streets of Berlin. Sirius nods slowly. 

“I think I get it,” he says. “I need to know what goes into the making of a story before I can make the story come alive.”

For this he gets a smile. “Four o’clock on Wednesdays in the Rogers lecture room. You’ll be there?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, I will.” 

***

And, sure enough, Wednesday afternoon finds Sirius standing in the middle of a hallway, wondering where the hell the Rogers lecture room is. He checks his watch—4 minutes to go. He’s glad he got there early, but at this rate, it won’t make much of a difference. 

He contemplates just leaving. He didn’t sign up for the class or anything (wait, was he supposed to?) and it’s not like there would be roll call or anything anyway. But he trusts Professor Fischer, and at least this seminar is something to do that isn’t scrolling through his old texts with Remus and crying. 

When someone bumps into him, he turns around. It’s a girl with shoulder-length auburn hair and a lip ring. Her eyes are green—piercingly so—and he opens his mouth and closes it again a few times trying to remember what he was going to say. 

At first, he thinks  _ oh, fuck, we’re back to being flusted around pretty girls. Wonderful.  _ But then he realizes that while she’s attractive, sure, from an objective point of view, he’s not really attracted to her. 

He’s actually a little bit scared of her. No, scratch that,  _ very _ scared of her. Maybe it has something to do with the vicious glare she’s sending him. 

“Um,” he says, finally. “Sorry. Do you by any chance know where the Rogers lecture room is?”

She purses her lips and nods, striding past him further down the hall. After a moment, he follows her to the elevator and waits as she jabs aggressively at the  _ up _ button. There’s a long, awkward silence while the elevator gets to their floor, broken only by the loud  _ ding  _ when it arrives. 

The ride up between floors is even more painful, if that’s possible. Sirius tries to occupy himself by looking at the ceiling, which is mirrored, so he looks at the wall instead. It’s patterned like a booth in some sort of high-class restaurant—greenish, with vaguely paisley-shaped blotches here and there. 

Finally, they arrive at a hallway identical to the one they came from. The walls are the same off-white; the floors have the same grey carpeting. If he didn’t know better, Sirius would say they hadn’t moved at all. 

The girl walks out, the soles of her pink high-tops squeaking until she’s out of the elevator and into the hall. She turns around. 

“Well, come on, then,” she tells him, voice not at all how he had expected. It’s the first time he’s heard her speak, and he’s surprised at the eastern accent. Nova Scotia, he guesses, or New Bruinswick. He nods wordlessly. 

He finds himself being led into a small lecture room—smaller than any he’s ever been in, anyway—with fifteen or so other students milling around, chatting and laughing. On the whiteboard at the front of the room, someone’s written  _ Glenrow A.L.L. Creative Writing Seminar _ . 

Looking left, then right, and finding that his red-haired saviour has vanished into the crowd, he sits down at the very back of the room. He has around thirty seconds of awkwardly waiting for something to happen before there’s a shout of “Sit down and shut up!” from somewhere near the front. 

When the smoke clears—or, if he abandons the metaphors, everyone else has chosen a seat and he can actually see who’s speaking—it turns out the person addressing the room is the same girl who led him there. She’s smiling, now, unlike when she was with him, and her hands are outstretched in front of her. 

“Hi, everyone! Welcome to the A.L.L., or Alumni-Led Lectures, creative writing seminar—free, because we know you’re university students and you therefore have no money.” This gets a ripple of laughter from the seated students, and her shoulders rise a little more. Sirius knows why; positive audience feedback does the same thing to him. “I’m Lily Evans, and I graduated from University of Glenrow last year with a bachelor’s in Engligh lit. I’m going to be your main instructor for the next few months. Here with me to help me out, because I wouldn’t be able to do it on my own, is my good friend John Lupin.”

A boy, tall and lanky, peels himself away from the wall and goes to stand beside her. She says something else, but Sirius doesn’t hear it, because his eyes are fixed on her companion and his ears are ringing. 

Whatever Lily says, that boy’s name isn’t John. 

It’s Remus. 

And he broke up with Sirius two weeks ago. 


	2. Act One, Scene Two - Frontcloth

How is it that whatever he does, wherever he is, Remus comes into it somehow? It’s probably not on purpose, since _Remus_ dumped _him_ —not the other way around—but he can’t turn a corner without running into the guy. 

Remus’s profile was there on tinder when he tried to find a date to try and get over Remus. When he tried to phone James three days ago, he pressed Remus’s contact instead and went through a panicked few moments of _shit shit shit end call end call_. In fact, judging by the ‘H. Sedin’ Canucks hoodie Remus is wearing now, he was also the boy Sirius saw crying the day he got himself into this current mess. 

The worst part is that Remus hasn’t even noticed him yet. His eyes have scanned the crowd, passing right over Sirius, a few times now, and Sirius finds himself creeping closer and closer to tears. 

He can’t quite hear what Remus or John or whoever he is is saying, but he does hear when Lily tells them brightly, “All right! Our first exercise is more fun; just an introduction to the course. Who here has heard of ‘exquisite corpse’?” 

A few of the students put their hands up, and Sirius notices a few more talking excitedly. All that’s coming to his mind is the Romeo and Juliet death scene, but he guesses that’s not what she’s talking about. 

“Now,” she continues, “There should be a piece of paper on your desk—” there isn’t, but there is one on the desk beside him. He reaches over and grabs it. 

“Does everyone have something to write with?” Most people nod, and Sirius rifles through his pockets one by one. He’s relieved when he finds a golf pencil in the zippered pocket of his leather jacket. “Good. On that piece of paper, on the top line, I want you to write this.” 

She snatches a dry-erase marker from the table near the front, and scribbles in all capital letters, _I looked out my bedroom window and I saw…_

There’s a flurry of motion and the sound of pencils scratching on paper as everyone copies the words dutifully down. 

“And now I want you to finish that sentence however you want. The more ridiculous the better.”

Sirius thinks for a minute. Finally, he scrawls _a flying motorcycle_ and waits for the next instruction. 

It doesn’t come for a good ten seconds, and he winces when the person sitting two desks down from him begins to click their pen incessantly. He does _not_ have the energy to deal with this. Not right now. 

Lily Evans’s voice is the only thing that drowns out that infernal _click, click, click,_ and Sirius has never in his twenty-two years on this planet been so goddamn grateful to hear the words “And now everyone pass your paper to the person on your left.”

Now comes the passing of papers to the left. Sirius sings this in his head to the tune of ‘Time Warp’ and smiles. Then he thinks of Remus and stops smiling. 

Fucking hell, he needs to get over that boy—and fast. 

He finds himself, once papers have been passed, staring at an almost-blank page with the words _I looked out my bedroom window and I saw hoards of zombies, flesh rotting and eyes falling out of their sockets, stumbling towards me_ written in tiny, neat script. A shiver climbs up from the base of his spine. 

What a charming mental image. 

“On the next line—the one below what the last person wrote—I want you to add onto the story. Put whatever you want, as long as it makes sense with the line above it. Leave it on a cliffhanger, if you want.” 

_Almost immediately, I fainted._ There. That’s pretty good. But it needs something else. 

_When I came to, there was…_

Perfect. 

Someone in the front row laughs. He wonders why. 

“Once you’re done, you need to fold over the top of the paper so only what you’ve added is visible; you shouldn’t be able to see the starting line.”

Carefully, Sirius folds the page, running his thumbnail along the crease a few times. Boarding school didn’t teach him how to write, but it _did_ teach him how to make paper airplanes. 

“And pass again to the left.”

_I was scared._ Well, at least he isn’t the only person here without any talent. He jots down _With good reason—it had spines all along its tail and its mouth was full of…_

“And fold, and pass.” 

The lines he writes begin to jumble themselves around in his head. There’s no rhyme or reason to them. 

_She had avocados for hair._

_I couldn’t find the banana peel!_

_A diamond ring._

_Inside was a…_

_Screaming, I chopped off his ear._

_“What, were you raised by wolves?”_ No, mom, I was raised by you, _I wanted to say, but I didn’t._

_The stapler must have been poisoned._

_Oh, no, not another…_

_Don’t forget the geese!_

_Unfortunately, I am allergic to toothbrushes._

“All right,” Lily finally says, snapping Sirius out of his trance. “One last one. Make it count.”

He looks down at the page in front of him. _“Do you love me, Susan?” he said._

His fingers shake as he puts pencil to paper. Lily had said to make it count. 

_“No, Remus, I don’t,” I told him,_ he writes. _“Not anymore.”_


	3. Act One, Scene Three

It takes Sirius almost the whole week to decide whether or not to go back to the seminar. It’s a week filled with highlighting the wrong lines in his new script. It’s a week filled with closing the fridge door on James’s fingers. It’s a week filled with putting salt in his coffee; banging his head against his computer keyboard; and binge-watching all six seasons of _Schitt’s Creek_. 

Finally, on Tuesday, James walks into the living room and drops the cat on his face. “Get up, loser, we’re going shopping.”

Sirius shrieks when Elvendork’s paw digs into his throat. “Was that a Mean Girls reference?”

“Yes. Now get up.”

Only now does Sirius realize he hasn’t left the apartment in six days. He’s almost forgotten how to dress for polite society. 

Oh, wait. He’s a university student. He isn’t part of polite society. 

But his leather jacket is still draped over the back of the couch where he left it, and his combat boots are still under his bed. He throws on a pair of ripped jeans—cuffed, of course—and a Queen t-shirt, pulling some of his hair back into a bun. 

James sighs when he sees him. “Are you _ever_ going to grow out of scrunchies?” 

“I’ll grow out of them when you stop giving them to me for my birthday. And Christmas. And Holi. And Diwali. And—”

“I get the point. Touché.” 

They bump shoulders good-naturedly, each petting Elvendork and telling her _We’ll be back soon, princess, don’t worry your pretty little ears about it,_ and then James pushes him out into the hallway and locks the door of apartment 128 behind them. 

“All right,” Sirius says once they’re outside, “Where to?” 

James snaps his fingers and shoots a pair of finger guns his way. Sirius smiles, rolls his eyes, and does the same. “Frankie’s!” they exclaim together, James with, admittedly, a great deal more enthusiasm. 

Frankie’s is their comfort space. It’s everyone at Glenrow University’s comfort space, really, but James and Sirius are the ones with the table that’s practically reserved for them and the waiters who all know what they mean when they order their ‘regular’—a root beer for Sirius, a Diet Pepsi for James (he’s not trying to cut back on sugar; he just prefers it) and a large fries to split between them. 

In fact, when Sirius pushes the door open and the bell rings, the woman at the till looks up. “Sirius!” she says. “James! The regular, then?”

James grins. “Thanks, Marlene.”

(See? Their comfort space.) 

They slide, one after the other, into booth four, and immediately James leans back and crosses his arms. 

“So,” he says. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

“Sure.”

Sirius glares at him. “I swear, it’s nothing.”

For this, he gets one slow, practised eyebrow raise. “Sirius, you have eaten practically nothing but instant ramen since last Wednesday. You did not so much as touch the container of my mum’s curry that was in the fridge. You have not uploaded a single video of Elvendork to Instagram. There is decidedly something wrong.” 

“Fine!” Sirius slumps forward onto the table, head in his hands. “Everything’s wrong.”

“Everything?” 

“Shut up. Almost everything. My entire damn love life, anyway.”

“Remus?”

Of course James knows about Remus—they tell each other everything. Sometimes a little too much, actually, like when James was dating Regulus. Sirius had had no desire to know what it was like to kiss his little brother then, and he has no desire to know now. 

Unfortunately, Sirius rarely gets what he wants. 

Case in point: their food comes before he has the chance to say anything more, and when he tries to squirt ketchup over the fries (yes over; anyone who pours out a little puddle and dips is a heathen (cough, James, cough)) most of it gets on his jeans instead. 

“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath, and grabs a napkin. 

By the time he looks up again, ketchup mostly removed from his clothing, James has drained his Diet Pepsi and is already halfway through the fries to boot. 

“Hey, hey,” he says. “Those are mine. Back off.” 

James laughs, stealing another fry before grabbing the salt shaker and pouring some out into his palm. Sirius grabs two fries, both with a healthy doolop of ketchup, and stuffs them into his mouth. He practically moans out loud, which sends James into fits of laughter. 

He can’t help it. The fries at Frankie’s are literal heaven, and this is the first time since the term started he’s gone more than two days without them. 

“So,” he says once he’s devoured enough that he can’t make fun of James anymore. “You obviously brought me here for a reason. What is it?”

“Do I need a reason to eat Frankie’s fries?”

“You have a point.”

Still, however good the frech fries may be, James definitely has a reason for bringing him here. It almost definitely has something to do with interrogating him on every life decision he’s made in his entire life since last Wednesday. 

And, indeed, when James finally speaks, it’s to say, “What happened? Are you okay?”

“No. I’m not okay.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

“Really?” 

He is hit with a sudden desire to hug his friend. People talk about soulmates like they’re always romantic, but they’re not—he and James are proof enough of that. They know each other better than they know themselves, sometimes, and they always know each other better than anyone else. James (well, and Regulus) is the only person Sirius ever told about Remus.

“I saw him.”

“You… saw him?” 

“Yeah. At a course I went to—remember? The one Fischer made me go to.”

“Ah yes. The one that’s supposed to improve your acting skills.”

“Shut up. Well, he’s teaching it.”

James twiddles his finger in a ‘rewind’ motion. “Wait. I thought that class was taught by alumni. Isn’t that what you said?”

“Yeah.”

“But Remus is our age. That’s what you said when the two of you started dating, anyway.”

With a roll of his eyes, Sirius tells him, “Not everyone took three gap years, dumbass.” 

“Oh. Right.”

Sometimes, even Sirius forgets that most of the people they go to school with are nineteen, not twenty-two. Maybe it’s because he and James still act like they’re eleven. 

“That’s weird that he’s at Glenrow. I always thought he lived in, like, Toronto, or something.”

Sirius shrugs. “Well, he doesn’t.”

“Think about it, though. That girl’s phone number? The tumblr thing? And now this? The universe keeps throwing you two together, Padfoot.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes the universe is wrong.”

There’s a long pause, and Sirius thinks he’s finally managed to say something so profound James is left speechless. But it is not so. 

“Mood,” James says, and they both burst out laughing. 

***

They end up slumped together on the couch at nine that night, scrolling through Netflix. Every so often, one of them will suggest something, only for the other to quickly veto it. 

“ _Queen’s Gambit_ looks good.”

“Seen it. Three times. Remember?”

“I don’t, but okay.”

“ _Nailed It_?”

“I’m too depressed to laugh right now.”

“ _Miraculous Ladybug_?”

“Fuck off, that was _once._ ”

They finally settle on _She-Ra_ , “because it’s gay,” and before their third episode is finished they’ve already reached the bottom of the bowl of popcorn. They have no use for the rest; Peter was the only one of them who didn’t mind the uncooked kernels, and Peter is not here.

Sirius protests when James stands up—he is not fond of being unceremoniously dumped from James’s lap to the floor—but he smiles when his friend returns with ice cream. (Vanilla, of course, because plain and simple is the best.) (Definitely not because they can’t afford anything else.)

When he leans back to check the clock, Sirius’s neck strains. He blinks at the time—1:04 in the morning—and wonders _where did the time go?_ Unfortunately, he can’t move, because James is asleep on his shoulder and Elvendork is asleep on his feet. James he would have no problem waking, but to disturb the cat would be to commit a crime that stronger men than he cower at the thought of committing. 

So, stifling a yawn and feeling his eyes droop, Sirius falls asleep. 

  
He dreams of hazel-gold eyes and soft brown hair and being left on _read_.


	4. Act One, Scene Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter contains mentions of alcohol/kissing someone whilst under the influence thereof so read carefully please :)

Wednesday morning dawns to see Sirius Black slowly open his eyes, stretch his legs and arms one by one, shove James onto the floor as payback for the previous night, and immediately begin to panic. 

Today is the day he either goes back or he doesn’t. 

In the meantime, he stomps down the hall into his bedroom to change. After all, he’s been in these clothes all last night and a good portion of yesterday, and ‘I-realistically-could- have-and-actually-did-wake-up-like-this’ is really not the look he wants. Instead, he struggles valiantly to decide between suave and drop-dead gorgeous. 

On the one hand, he could go with his personal spin on the classic bad boy: button up shirt under a leather jacket, hair carefully mussed, slim black jeans. But he knows from experience Remus doesn’t like bad boys. Remus likes  _ him.  _

Or, well, he did. 

The other hand it is, then—denim overalls with fishnets showing through the holes in the knees, his old Blue Jays shirt, and, after a good half hour spent in the bathroom, a dusting of silver eyeshadow paired with eyeliner wings sharp enough to cut glass. 

James visibly brightens when he walks back into the kitchen. “Can I braid your hair? Please?  _ Please _ let me braid your hair.”

He lets James braid his hair. He always does. James is good at it, too—he only pulls Sirius’s hair hard enough to hurt once, and even that’s only because Elvendork bumps his elbow. In the mirror afterwards, Sirius turns his head to and fro and admires his friend’s handiwork. 

It’s one thick french braid tied with a red scrunchie at the bottom. He blows at the two tendrils that hand near his face. “Perfectly done, Prongs,” he says. “As always.” 

“Thanks. Now go write some books and win back your man.”

Sirius manages to not to point out that, A), he’s a long way away from full-length novels, and B), Remus broke up with him for a reason and is therefore probably not looking to take him back. James would just ignore him, anyway. He has a tendency to do that. 

This time around, he finds the Rogers lecture room without incidence. Unfortunately, he underestimated himself when it came to leaving the apartment, and he ends up already standing outside nearly twenty minutes before he’s technically supposed to be there. Someone’s inside, judging by the voices he can hear. One of them is recognizable as Lily Evans’s thick maritime dialect, and the other—

Fucking hell. 

It’s Remus. 

Sirius may not be here to win Remus back, but he never said anything about not showing him what he’s missing out on. So he strides into the lecture hall as confidently as he can, grinning when both Remus and Lily’s head turn towards him. He focuses on the latter, giving Remus the same out-of-sight-out-of-mind treatment he himself received the previous week. 

“Hi,” he says brightly. “I realize I’m a little early—sorry about that, by the way—but I’ve got time to kill and I was wondering if you need help with anything? Setting up, or…”

By some miracle, he manages to trail off in a way that is decidedly not awkward. Sirius: 1. Remus: god knows how many by now. 

“No, I don’t think so,” Lily says. “Wait actually—you know how to use a photocopier, eh?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I need you to run down to the staff room and make nineteen photocopies of this.” She pulls her backpack off and roots through it for a moment, finally pulling a slightly crumpled piece of paper out triumphantly. When Sirius takes it, flattening it out against a desk, he feels her—and, next to her, Remus—eyeing him curiously. 

“Where’s the staff room?” he asks at the same time as she blurts out, “Do I know you?”

Sirius doubts she’s talking about their brief interaction last week. He’s not entirely sure what she  _ does  _ mean, but at least he’s narrowed it down a little. 

“I’m sorry, I don’t think—”

“No, Lily,” Remus finally says, voice halfway between chilling and resigned. “You don’t. I do.”

Both Sirius’s and Lily’s heads turn to look at him so quickly it would seem hilarious to an outside spectator. “What do you mean, you know him?”

“He’s… well. Sirius, I’m sure you know Lily by now. Lily, meet Sirius, my ex-boyfriend.”

In the past, Sirius has heard the phrase ‘the silence was deafening.’ This silence is not deafening; it’s suffocating. 

At least, until something registers in Lily’s expression and she turns on her heel, taking a step towards Remus, who backs away. For good reason, too—she’s clearly on the warpath. 

“Sirius? Sirius Black? Sirius Orion  _ fucking  _ Black?  _ That’s _ him?”

Remus manages one minuscule nod, eyes blown wide with fear. “And he’s  _ here _ ? R—” she breaks off, pausing a moment before continuing. “John Lupin, I don’t believe you.”

“Look, Lily, I can explain—”

“Explain to  _ him _ . Show him where the staff room is, because he clearly knows  _ nothing. _ ” 

“Okay,” Sirius protests, “I think that’s a little—”

“Go. I’m going to close my eyes and count to ten, and if either of you is still here when I open them again there is going to be bloodshed.” 

There is no bloodshed, because they are not there when she opens her eyes. Instead, they are out in the hall, Remus leading Sirius towards the elevator. 

Much like with Lily the previous week, they do not speak. Even when Remus courteously holds the staff room door open, all Sirius gives him is a short, sharp nod. Somehow, without so much as interacting, they manage to work out a system: Sirius puts the initial page into the photocopier, and Remus does everything else. 

He turns away as Remus presses the buttons, and then he waits. There’s a faint  _ beep beep  _ and then silence except for the sound of paper being spit out of the machine. 

It is, by far, the most awkward silence in the history of silences. 

When nineteen copies have been made, Remus gathers them up and hole punches them. Someone should really say something. Remus clearly isn’t going to, so Sirius says the one thing he can think of. 

“Why’d you do it?”

The one benefit to asking this, out of every question out there, is that Remus can’t pretend not to know what he’s talking about. “I did something stupid.”

“Are you saying you broke up with me  _ because  _ you did something stupid, or that breaking up with me  _ was  _ the stupid thing?”

“I—” he cuts himself off, and doesn’t speak again for a good long time. Finally, Sirius gives up, walking towards the door. He’s reaching for the handle when Remus starts again. 

“I was at a party. I was… well, I wasn’t drunk, excatly, just a little tipsy, but… I kissed someone.” 

Okay, that is a bit surprising. Sirius hadn’t exactly had him pegged as the type. But then again, he hadn’t though Remus was the type to dump someone with no explanation, either. He should really work on his assumption-making skills. 

“And that correlates to breaking up with me how? Because I think I’m missing something.”

“I thought that if you found out, you’d be the one doing the breaking up.” 

“Well, I wouldn’t.”

“Oh.”

Yet another silence. Somehow, this one is worse than the last. That was like the dream where you show up at school naked. This is the dream that you never remember, the one where you wake up crying. 

Sirius sets his shoulders. He grasps the doorknob firmly, prepared to make his escape. 

“Or maybe I would have. We’ll never know, will we? Because  _ you _ dumped  _ me _ first.” 

The door swings closed behind him, and if Remus says anything, he doesn’t let himself hear it. 


	5. Act One, Scene Five

Sirius knows he’s petty. Extremely so. Petty enough to send the elevator all the way down to the ground floor so that Remus has to either take the stairs or wait, at least.

What Remus said is still wheeling in his mind. Remus kissed someone else. It hurts, yeah, but he’ll put on his brave face. He’ll move on. 

The thing that hurts most—the thing he can’t ignore or get over—is that he’s not sure whether he’s more upset that Remus cheated, more upset that Remus dumped him, or more upset that Remus didn’t give  _ him  _ the chance to break it off. Remus should have owned up to it,  _ and _ he should have given Sirius that choice. It’s like he said when before he left the staff room—maybe he would have ended things, maybe he wouldn’t have. 

He should have at least had the option to break Remus’s heart like Remus broke his, but instead Remus just broke his twice. 

Sure enough, Remus is five minutes late to the seminar, and Sirius knows that Lily’s pissed. What he doesn’t know is whether she’s pissed at Remus, or if she’s figured out that Sirius is the reason behind the delay and is pissed at  _ him _ . She seems the type to just  _ know  _ these things. 

He’s pretty sure he’s not imagining her glare in his direction when she says, “We’ll start in a minute or two; John will be back by then with the papers we need for today’s lecture,” but he decides to ignore it. After all, if there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s ignoring his problems. 

Well, and running away from them. It depends on the day and what mood he’s in. 

He also doesn’t miss the fact that when Remus  _ does  _ return, he pulls the classic  _ ‘take one and pass it on’ _ instead of handing out the papers one by one. It’s probably so that he doesn’t have to look Sirius in the face. 

When the stack reaches him, Sirius has to reach back a whole row of seats to get to the next person. He almost tips over in his chair, but manages to save himself a sore tailbone—and a whole lot of embarassment—at the last minute. 

The page is split into five sections:  _ theme _ ,  _ topic _ ,  _ setting _ ,  _ characters _ , and  _ story objective _ . He remembers, vaguely, learning some of this in grade seven, but that’s where his memory blanks. (What the everloving fuck is a  _ story objective _ ?)

Apparently he’s about to find out. 

Lily claps her hands together in an incredibly teacher-like way. If he didn’t know better, he would have a hard time believing this is the same woman who so aggressively played matchmaker (or maybe she was actually trying to drive them further away from each other; thinking back on it, Sirius can’t actually tell) only a few minutes before. “Well,” she says, addressing the room at large, “who can tell me what a theme is?”

There are a few raised hands, and she calls on the boy just behind Sirius, with chocolate-brown hair and more freckles than he can count. “It’s what the story is about. But like, in an abstract way.”

“Very good.” Lily takes a whiteboard marker out of her jeans pocket. Turning to the board, she draws a T-table, labelling one side  _ theme  _ and the other  _ topic.  _ Under the first heading, she writes  _ abstract _ , and, across from it,  _ concrete _ . 

“Theme and topic are often confused, because they’re both what a story is about. But—what’s your name?”

“Benjy. Benjy Fenwick,” says the freckled boy. 

“But Benjy here has hit the nail on the head. The difference between theme and topic is that a theme is abstract—a concept, or an idea, or a feeling—while a topic is concrete—such as a person, place, thing, or event….”

Sirius begins to zone out. Absentmindedly, he grabs a pencil and begins sketching on the smooth, polished wood of his desk. A circle, an oval, a line here and there, some shading—slowly, his doodle begins to take shape. By the time Lily says, “Now, who can give me some examples of a good story theme?” and people start calling out their answers, he’s perfected the glint in his anime-style eye. 

“One last one. How about you, by the back, with the Blue Jays shirt?”

(Of course she’s pretending she doesn’t know his name. Lucky him—he’s always wanted to be demoted back to ‘hey, you.’)

His head jerks up. “Uh, relationships,” he says, because he’s a walking cliche and, yes, of course that’s the only thing on his mind. Why wouldn’t it be?

“There’s an interesting one.” She adds it to the board, right underneath  _ hardship _ , pressing hard enough that the nib of the pen squeaks. “It could technically be counted as a topic, too, but it works well as a theme.”

There’s a pause as she looks around, seemingly searching for a suitable place to put her pen. Finally, she gives up, tucking it behind her ear. 

“What I want everyone to do now is think carefully about what theme they want to write about. You can pick as many as you want, and you can add more later, but it’s easiest to focus on just two or three. You can pick one of the ones we came up with here, or it can be something totally different, but make sure it’s something that speaks to you.”

Her words resonate in Sirius’s mind. Something that speaks to him? He starts to write, his large printing cramped in the tiny box, and he gets halfway through the second  _ C _ before he erases it again. He has to think for a minute. He doesn’t want to write about success, not when there’s so little of it in his life right now, but he doesn’t want to write about something dark, like suffering, either.

_ Loss _ , he puts down with finality. On second thought, he adds  _ healing _ . And then, just because he feels like it,  _ friendship _ . 

The clock on the wall says they have twelve more minutes before they’re finished; he wonders what else they’ll do before the class ends. Right now, the only sound in the room is the quiet scratching of pencils—soothing, he must admit, even though he personally prefers the excitement of applause—and it seems as though he’s the only one who’s finished. 

He lets himself look around, his eyes flickering from the clock to the whiteboard to the person sitting to his left. They dart to the door at the other side of the hall, and forward to where Remus is... staring right back at him. 

The two lock eyes for a good fifteen seconds before Remus lowers his gaze to the floor. It’s not much of a victory, Sirius knows, but it’s a victory nonetheless.

So why doesn’t it feel like one?

There’s not time to burrow any deeper into his own thoughts, however, because Lily is writing once more on the board. Unfortunately for him, he can’t see what she’s written—even when she turns around—because her head is in the way. 

“I assume most of you have your themes, and even if you don’t, you can always come back to it. Right now, we’re going to move onto topic—surprise surprise,  _ also _ what the story is about, but this time on a more concrete scale. Let’s take  _ Romeo and Juliet _ , for instance, because I’m fairly sure it’s a story we all know. Does anyone have any idea what the topic is?”

Silence. 

Sirius, usually the self-aware one in any situation (but apparently not this one), knows there are two possible reasons as to why he raises his hand. Unfortunately, he does not know which of them it is. The first is simple—he’s confident has the answer, and he wants to share it. The second is both a little more complex and a little more likely, and that is that he  _ doesn’t _ know what the answer is and maybe, just maybe, he wants to prove to Remus he’s not afraid to take risks. 

Either way, his tentative “Love?” is declared—spoiler alert—incorrect. 

“Wrong,” Lily says. “Love is a theme, not a topic. Try again.”

Well, he wasn’t expecting a second chance. (It seems he only ever gets them when he’s unprepared.) (Maybe there’s a lesson in that.)

“Um… people in love?” If the first answer wasn’t right, this one won’t be either. He knows that. But it is, frankly, all he can come up with. 

“Ding-a-ling-a-ling,” Lily deadpans, which actually sounds a little funny in that accent of hers. He’s not going to mention that, though, because he’s on pretty thin ice already where she’s concerned. “Correct. Yes, maybe they sound like basically the same thing, but they’re not. The way I like to put it is this: if you can draw a picture of it, chances are it’s the topic. If you can’t, chances are it’s the theme.” After a moment, she adds, “I probably should have said that at the beginning. Whatever.” 

This causes Remus’s lips to twitch up into a smile. In fact, it’s only just now that Sirius realizes he’s watching Remus at all—he could have sworn he stopped—and he forces himself to look away. 

But he really can’t deny it any longer. He really can’t deny that that little smile, happy and pure with just a hint of mischief, still makes his heart pound and his brain turn to mush. He really can’t deny that despite everything—despite the breakup, and the confession, and the promises made late at night that  _ he’s getting over this, he really is _ …

He’s still in desperate, painful, middle-grade YA novel love with Remus/John/does-it-really-matter-what-his-name-is Lupin. 


	6. Act One, Scene Six - Frontcloth

“Hey, wait up!” **  
**

Sirius turns around. He’s not sure he knows the girl who’s waving at him from two rows down, and he panics for a moment. _Should_ he know her? 

In any case, he waits by the door for her to catch up to him. Her dark mop of curls bounces up and down as she jogs, and she’s panting slightly by the time she reaches him. “Hi!”

“Hi.” 

“You’re new, aren’t you? I saw you last week, but you left before I could talk to you. I’m Dorcas Meadows.” 

“Sirius Black.” He hopes she’s not going to ask him on a date. 

“Like the star? That’s cool. Anyway, there’s a couple of us who get together after these things. Talk, eat—you know the drill. Wanna join us?”

Sirius hesitates. He doesn’t, really, but he also wants to be polite. He’s just wondering how to let her down gently when she says the magic words: “We’re going to Frankie’s.”

“Okay, I’m in.” 

Grinning, Dorcas walks past him into the hall. “Grab your stuff and come on, then. Group’s leaving in two.”

He feels himself grinning back. He hasn’t been part of ‘the gang’ since he graduated high school—since Peter went down to college in the states and he and James parted ways with the rest of their class. 

James is more like his brother, anyway. Sirius needs some friends. 

He stuffs his paper into his backpack. It crumples slightly, but he ignores that in favour of doing up the zipper at practically the speed of light and swinging it over one shoulder. He’s stalled a moment by his shoelace catching on the leg of his chair, but then it’s out the door and into the hallway he goes. 

Dorcas is waiting for him, holding open the elevator door, and it seems as though, contrary to what she said, everyone else has already left. 

“Ground floor?” he asks, and she nods. 

By the time the elevator opens and she gestures for him to step out first, they’re engaged in conversation. Common ground has been discovered in two places: neither of them much likes pumpkin pie, and they agree that ‘shit’ is the best swear word. 

It’s not until they’re outside, both shivering slightly—he could swear it wasn’t this cold earlier—that Dorcas spots the rest of the group. “Over here,” she says, leading him over to five others he vaguely recognizes from the seminar, all around nineteen or twenty. 

The first to spot him is a man with vivid ginger hair, broad shoulders, and an even broader smile. He nudges the man beside him—tall and blond with the facial bone structure of a Greek god—who in turn pokes a short, pixielike woman in the arm. Soon, everyone’s eyes are on Sirius, and he’s thankful that Dorcas is quick to introduce him. 

“I got him!” she says, with significantly more excitement and enthusiasm than Sirius thinks he’s worth. “Lured him in with the promise of Frankie’s. Everyone, meet Sirius—like the celestial body, not the adjective. Sirius, meet Alice,” —she points to pixie girl— ”Alice’s boyfriend Frank,” —a plain-looking man with pale blue eyes and incredibly thick, dark eyebrows— “Fabian,” —this is the ginger— “Fabian’s boyfriend Caradoc,” —here she indicates Mr. Cheekbones— “And Mary.” 

Sirius is surprised that he managed to miss Mary on his initial scan; she has red and purple streaks in her light brown hair and her vibrant blue tracksuit makes him want to make a ‘The-90’s-wants-its-clothes-back’ joke. He only manages to stop himself, in fact, when Dorcas asks, “Where are Green and Moony?” 

It’s Caradoc who answers. “They went on ahead. We’re meeting them there.” Sirius wonders who they’re talking about, but he doesn’t ask. 

He learns pretty quickly that everyone has their dynamics. This group of friends he’s been invited to tag along with may be at least partially open to new members, but he’s not one of them yet. 

Lagging back slightly with Dorcas, he notices a few things:

Fabian and Caradoc are the kind of couple you would never in a million years notice unless you already knew about them. Their way of interaction is a lot more playful punches and friendly teasing than hand-holding and longing glances (though there is, to be fair, still a decent amount of that). It’s clear to him they’ve been a couple for a long time, and close friends for an even longer time before that, too. 

Frank is obviously a little afraid of Alice—their relationship is probably relatively new, then. He loves her, as Sirius can tell by the way he smiles whenever she talks, but he’s still a little afraid of getting on her bad side. Sirius can’t blame him—Alice is fiery; her temper is quick to rise and quicker to boil over. 

The one who interests him the most is Mary. Contrary to what is suggested by her _bold_ clothing choices, she’s quiet—not shy, per se, but she doesn’t really speak much unless she absolutely has to. In fact, Sirius only hears her say one thing the entire walk to Frankie’s, and it’s, “But that won’t matter once we’re all dead.” (So she’s the cynical type, then. She and Remus would get along—he, too, greatly enjoys dark humour.)

...Oh, fuck. 

Remus. 

Remus who’s helping teach the seminar. 

Remus who said he knew a lot of people in the class already. 

Remus who’s sitting right there, across from Lily, in booth seven. 


	7. Act One, Scene Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for food, tattoos/piercings, religious homophobia, and mentions of alcohol

Sirius stands there for what seems like hours—though it’s probably only a few seconds—just standing there, staring through the window. Maybe he should forget the whole thing and leave now. 

But Alice pushes the door open, waving when Remus and Lily look up. Before he can protest, Dorcas pulls him in by the elbow. 

It’s like time slows down when Remus’s gaze flickers past Dorcas and settles on him. He blinks, as though trying to clear his vision, and then he does the last thing Sirius expects. 

He smiles. 

It’s like Sirius’s brain just glitches. He imagines James’s voice in his head—as he so often does when he’s faced with situations similar to this one—saying  _ ‘Padfoot.exe. has stopped working,’ _ and the thought is so ridiculous it actually shocks him back into the here and now. 

“This is Sirius,” says Dorcas for the second time in under ten minutes, and he waits, practically holding his breath, for Remus’s response. 

He’s prepared for anger. He’s prepared for indifference. He’s prepared for maybe, just maybe,  _ ‘Yes, I know.’ _

He is once again surprised, because he is most certainly  _ not  _ prepared for Remus to lean across the table with his hand out and say, “Nice to meet you.” 

“I—um—nice to meet you, too?” 

It’s clear to Sirius that no one else—save Lily, of course—has any idea of the significance of this moment, especially because he’s not actually sure what that significance  _ is _ . Obviously, they’re wiping the slate clean, but is it so they can start over again?

Or so they can pretend there was never anything written there at all? 

This is the only thing he can think about as Dorcas slides into the booth next to Lily, motioning for Sirius to sit across from her, and he does, even though it means he’s right next to Remus. Frank squeezes in beside him, and Alice behind Frank, and Mary hesitates a moment before she sits down, too, shoulder-to-shoulder with Dorcas. For a moment, he wonders where Fabian and Caradoc are going to place themselves—there’s no way two more people are going to fit in the booth—but then Fabian pulls two chairs out from a nearby table. He sits down in one, then abruptly stands up again. 

“I’ll grab menus,” he says, gesturing with one thumb towards the counter, and Sirius watches him go, if only for  _ something  _ to look at. 

Dorcas grins. “So, Sirius, tell us a bit about yourself.”

“Um—”

“Invitations to these get-togethers are rare, you know, but you know what’s even rarer? Second invitations. So start talking, buddy, and let the high council judge your crimes.”

“Dorc,” Alice reprimands, “you’re scaring him.” 

“Nah, it’s fine. My brother’s pretty, um, intense, too.”

Sirius’s confidence swells slightly at the laugh that earns him from the rest of the group. “I’m Sirius—I’m twenty-two, but I’m only in first year university because reasons. My favourite food is butter chicken. I was kicked out at age sixteen after I came out as bisexual, and I moved in with my best friend, who also happens to be my brother’s ex-boyfriend. Oh, and I’m an actor. I think that’s the basics? 

Except for Remus, who knows most of this already, everyone stares at him, expressions ranging from stunned to  _ well then _ . Remus is either trying to break the tension or goad Sirius into something embarrassing when he says, “An actor? Have you been in any movies?”

Deja vu smacks into Sirius like a cement truck. If he recalls correctly—and, honestly? There’s no way in hell he doesn’t—that’s exactly what Remus said the  _ first  _ time Sirius introduced himself. So, of course, he responds in the same way he did then, too. “Ew. Absolutely not. Stage life all the way for me, dude.” 

Immediately, he wishes he could pull up google. Key words:  _ is it socially acceptable to call your ex ‘dude’? Is that, like, legal?  _

But Remus just grins and tips his head back in laughter. After a moment, the others follow him in ways that range from a distracted smile (Mary) to a laugh so explosive he imagines Frank would have spit out his tea if he had any. 

They’re still laughing, all eight out of nine of them, when Marlene arrives at their table, one pencil tucked behind her ear and another between her fingers as she taps it absentmindedly against her coil-bound notebook. 

“Hi,” she says, glancing from person to person. “What can I get you tod—Sirius?”

“Hiya, Marls.” 

“Fancy meeting you here.” They both smile a bit at this, because it really isn’t that surprising—neither of them ever spends a whole lot of time away from Frankie’s, really. “Where’s James?”

Sirius gasps, pretending to be affronted. “I do have other friends, I’ll have you know. He and I aren’t joined at the hip.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“Well,” he says, deciding to change the subject, “I’ll get the, uh…” it feels wrong to order fries without James there, and he’s only just now realizing that he hasn’t actually tried anything else on the menu. “The BLT. And a Nanaimo bar, please.” 

“Branching out a little, are we?”

“Shut up.”

“Okay, okay. And for you?”

Without even thinking about it, he, too, turns to look at Remus, who’s got his nose buried in the menu. “A croissant,” he says, just like Sirius knew he would. “Wait, no. Two croissants.” 

“Plain? Chocolate? Cheese?”

It seems as though Remus sits up straighter. “Chocolate?”

“Are you asking me or telling me?” Marlene jokes in typical Marlene-fashion. 

“Telling. Croissant. Chocolate. Yes.”

(A month ago, Sirius would have leaned over and whispered that he thinks the embarrassed blush colouring Remus’s cheeks and nose is cute. But now is not a month ago. Now, everything is different.)

Lily orders a Greek salad and an iced coffee, but Sirius isn’t paying attention to her. No, he has eyes only for the way Remus, seemingly out of sheer boredom, takes his phone out of his hoodie pocket and unlocks it, grinning at whatever he sees. Sirius wonders, somewhere in the back of his mind, whether that’s the same way Remus used to smile when he got a text from  _ him.  _ It doesn’t matter anymore, but he can’t help but hope that once upon a time he, too, made Remus that happy. 

He doesn’t speak again until everyone else has ordered, too (grilled cheese and a sundae for Alice, poutine for Dorcas, and bagels for both Mary and Frank; Fabian and Caradoc say they’ll share a banana split (could those two get any cuter, honestly)) and even then it’s only because Dorcas asks him a question. 

“What?” he says, shaking himself out of his thoughts. 

“Marlene—is she your friend? Girlfriend?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we’re friends. We’ve known each other for years. Community theatre, mostly, and I see here when I come here, which is probably way too often. But no, we’re not together—Marls swings completely the other way.”

Dorcas nods. “Cool. Think I have a shot? Am I her type?”

“Depends. Do you like  _ Titanic _ ?” 

“The movie? No.”

“Then yes, you’re her type.” 

He laughs under his breath when she adjusts her collar and tucks her hair behind her ear. It’s the classic ‘Preparing-to-ask-a-girl-out’ routine—he’s gone through it himself on many an occasion; here’s to hoping she has more luck—and he looks away to one side to hide a smile. Unfortunately, Remus has had the same idea, and their eyes connect for a few painful seconds. 

This time, Sirius makes himself look away first. 

He finds his gaze drawn to Lily, who’s scrolling through something—probably Instagram—on her phone. He tongue flicks out every once in a while to nudge at her lip ring, and he finds the movement almost mesmerizing.

Just out of curiosity, he thinks about kissing her. Her hair would be soft between his fingers. For some reason, he imagines it smelling like citrus. Her lips look soft, but in his head they’re slightly chapped, cool and warm at the same time as they press against his, and he pulls away to look into those shining amber eyes—

Wait, Lily’s eyes are green, not amber. He is most definitely thinking about someone else—someone with twelve freckles on his nose and golden hair that curls around his ears. 

Three guesses who it is. 

But no, he scolds himself, he is not here to mope over cute boys he used to date. Or any cute boys at all, for that matter. He’s here to have fun. To make friends. To eat good food. If Remus wants to play strangers, they’ll do just that. 

“So,” he says, turning his head sideways. “You’re John, right? John Lupin?”

Maybe, just maybe, someone will explain the whole fake name thing. 

And for once, his prayers are answered. 

“Well, no,” Remus says, and Sirius searches those beautiful eyes for any trace of the fact that they both know he knows this already. He’s not sure whether to be bitter or hurt or simply sad when he finds none, so he settles for a bit of all three. “Actually, John’s my middle name. My first name’s Remus. But if you’re a literature student with a name like Remus Lupin, the only people who are going to take you seriously are the ones—well, the ones with names like Sirius Black. So I started going by John, and it just sort of stuck.”

“Remus.” Sirius twists his mouth around it, enunciating both syllables carefully, like he’s saying it for the first time. He supposes he is, in a way—after all, by unspoken agreement they seem to be starting over. 

“It’s like—do you ever get—do people ever think your name’s just a stage name?”

“All the time.” He can’t quite be sure whether or not they’ve had a conversation like this before; it does seem familiar, but most things do these days. Even if they haven’t really discussed this already, they almost certainly have in Sirius’s head. Or something similar to it, anyway.

“It’s like that. People assume it isn’t my real name, so I changed it.” 

“Huh.” Tilting his head slightly, Sirius puts on an ‘innocently curious’ air that he knows Remus will be able to see right through. “Anything else I should know about you?”

“I turn into a bloodthirsty werewolf on full moons,” Remus says without skipping a beat. It’s impressive, really, how long he holds a completely straight face, and Sirius watches carefully to try and catch even a glimpse of a smile. “All right,” he says when it becomes clear none will appear. “Monsters are people too, I guess.”

And there it is—that wide, oh-so-brilliant grin that still makes his breath catch in his throat.  _ No,  _ he reprimands.  _ No. Absolutely not. You are not going to fall in love with him again. It will only end in pain.  _ Your _ pain.  _

That’s right. He’s not in love. He’s not even in crush. He’s just becoming friends with someone he used to date. No biggie. Plenty of people do that, right? James and Regulus broke up almost a year ago, and _they_ still hang out. 

Sufficiently reassured, he plows bravely on. “What else? Have you, I dunno, killed anyone?”

“No, but I do have three tattoos.”

Sirius blinks slowly. He can picture one of them—the crossed ski poles on the inside of Remus’s ankle—but he doesn’t think he’s seen the other two. “Really?”

“Yeah. I’ve got a pair of ski poles on my foot—I’m from Whistler; practically grew up on the hills—and here, on my wrist—” he pauses, rolling his sleeve up to expose his inner arm “—I’ve got the Illuminati symbol.”

There’s a beat of silence as Sirius waits for the ‘just kidding.’ None comes, however, and apparently none will, because now he can see the small triangle inked there, plain as day. 

“I was eighteen, okay?” continues Remus. “And I hadn’t slept in like four days and I might have been slightly drunk. Everyone who has tattoos also has tattoo horror stories, and this is mine. Don’t judge me.”

“I’m not judging you.” And he’s really not. He knows what it’s like to make bad decisions when one is young and tired—he fights off the flashbacks of a sixteen-year-old James piercing his left ear for him at two in the morning—and hey, at least Remus has learned to laugh about it now. “What’s the third one?” 

“The third tattoo?”

“Yeah.” 

Pulling up his sleeve even farther, Remus points to a patch of tiny lettering on the inside of his elbow. “It says ‘Leviticus 18:22.’” 

“What’s that?”

“It’s a bible verse. You’ve probably heard it before, or some version of it— _'thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind, ‘tis an abomination.'_ ”

Sirius feels as though his thought process has been unceremoniously dumped into a blender.  _ What?  _ Remus can’t be a homophobe. Remus dated him, for heaven’s sake. 

(He’s also right—Sirius  _ has  _ heard that before. As soon as she found out he was queer, his mother pulled a bible out from he’s not sure where and read that verse out to him. It was, like, a whole thing.)

The only thing he can think of to say is ‘what,’ so that's what he says. “What?”

“Don’t worry,” Remus hurries to assure him, “I’m not a bigot or anything. I like guys, too. I just did it for the edge factor, y’know? It’s ironic; it’s supposed to be funny.”

“You have a really weird sense of humour.”

“I know.”

Slowly, Sirius shakes his head in disbelief. “So three tattoos—ski poles, Illuminati, and bible reference?”

“Yep.”

Then he hears, from the end of the table, “And the one on your neck.”

Both Sirius’s and Remus’s gazes dart to Fabian, who has stopped fiddling with the salt shaker and is looking over at them quizzically. “That constellation thing. The one you only got a couple months ago.”

Remus does not look like a deer in headlights. He looks like an escaped criminal caught in the flashlight beam of a police detective. 

Matters are only made worse—or better, Sirius reasons, depending on how you look at it—when Alice joins in. “Yeah, Moony! That’s the coolest one, if you ask me.”

Remus blushes. It’s only because of the close proximity that Sirius hears his mutter “No one did,” under his breath. 

“This fucker here,”Alice says, seemingly oblivious to humiliation radiating from Remus’s corner of the booth, “Came home—we live together, Lily and Remus and Caradoc and me—in… what was it? January? With yet another tattoo, and he wouldn’t tell us why. My guess is that he just walked by and saw the design in the window and decided he liked it. Impulsive one, our Moony.” 

Sirius decides that he’s not going to ask where the nickname comes from. He has a sneaking suspicion he doesn’t particularly want to know. 

“It’s kind of funny, actually. Took him like a week for us to bully him into letting us see it, and it turns out he’s got the Sirius constellation right there above his collarbone.” She pauses. “Sirius. Huh. I guess Remus just, like, subconsciously decided you two should be friends, even though he hadn’t even met you yet. Maybe he’s psychic or something.”

Even if his life depended on it, nothing in the world could make Sirius look at Remus right now. If he does, something terrible is almost definitely going to happen—one of them will drop dead of a rare kind of heart attack, or Frankie’s will blow up and kill them all before their food gets there, or Sirius will start crying. 

A tattoo. A fucking  _ tattoo _ . It doesn’t make sense to him, no matter the number of times he adds it up in his head, because tattoos are something for people who are forever. 

It’s one of those things you just grow up learning—you don’t get tattoos of another person’s name (or the thing they’re named after; potato, potahto) unless you’re absolutely sure, and  _ sure  _ does not mean kissing other people at parties. 

Unless, apparently, you are Remus John Lupin. 

“Really?” Sirius asks. “Huh. That’s cool. Aren’t neck tattoos supposed to hurt, like, a shitton, though?”

There’s a pregnant pause, like the universe is holding its breath. Finally, Remus smiles tightly and says, just barely loud enough for Sirius to hear, “It was worth it.”

***

If Sirius was held at swordpoint and told to recount what the rest of their conversation entails, he would say  _ ‘stab me.’  _ All he can say for sure is that whatever discussion is had, it stops as soon as Marlene arrives with the food. 

“Two croissants for you, Sir,” she says, placing Remus’s plate in front of him. “And an iced coffee and Greek salad for you, my lady; a banana split for the two utterly charming earls here; a grilled cheese and triple hot fudge sundae for our duchess and one whole grain toasted bagel with cream cheese for her duke, a plain  _ untoasted  _ bagel with cream cheese for the princess with the colourful hair, and one serving of poutine for the absolute queen I see in front of me.”

Sirius is positive Dorcas actually swoons a little at the ‘queen’ comment. Were this a cartoon, her eyes would now be comically large pink hearts. 

“Oh, and how could I forget. A BLT and Nanaimo bar for our resident court jester.”

He sticks his tongue out at her. What can he say—he’s immature. And dramatic. The best combination, truly. 

Dorcas watches Marlene turn with a smile and walk back to the counter, and, once she’s sure the object of her affections is safely out of earshot, she sighs. “I think I’m in love.” 

“She snores,” Sirius tells her, to no avail. “Like a pig.”

“I love pigs.”

“No, Dorc.” Fabian’s eyes are glittering. “You love bacon.” 

“You guys are teaming up on me! This is homophobia!” 

“I’m literally gay.” 

“Fuck off.” 

Sirius catches Fabian’s eyes across the table. The ginger waves his ice cream spoon around his ear in a ‘crazy’ motion, and Sirius agrees wholeheartedly. Dorcas is, indeed, crazy. 

“You’re crazy, Dorcas.” 

“Crazy in love.” 

(At this point, he could probably tell the whole story about the tomatoes—acting out the best parts, no less—and it would not change her mind in the slightest.) (That’s a good thing, actually; no one deserves Marlene unless they can accept the tomato story in full.) 

Beside him, Remus is already halfway through his first croissant. Some would say he must be hungry, and those people clearly do not know Remus Lupin. He’s not hungry—well, he might be—he just loves chocolate  _ that much _ . There were times during their relationship that Sirius joked about Remus loving chocolate more than he loved Sirius himself. 

Well. He supposes that now, after everything, it’s probably true. 

_ (No! Bad Sirius! No moping!) _

His sandwich, he finds, when he takes a bite, isn’t actually that bad. It tastes—well, it tastes like bacon and lettuce and tomato and bread, which it is. It’s quite a good combination, he thinks, and he wishes he’d thought of it first. 

Finally, Dorcas motions for Mary to move out of the booth into the aisle. “I’m going for it,” she says, holding her hand up like a microphone. Sirius can’t help but laugh at the announcer voice she uses, and laugh more when she adds, “Wish me luck, my friends.”

“You won’t need it,” Remus assures her through a mouthful of croissant. 

“Who cares if I need it? It’s about the principle of the thing.”

“Good luck, Dorcas.”

“ _ Thank  _ you, Lily.” 

It would seem fitting, Sirius reasons, if they had popcorn right now. They’re certainly all watching intently, as if it's a movie, the shy way Dorcas and Marlene smile at each other before they start talking too quietly to hear. When Marlene starts twisting her blond hair around her index finger, Remus leans over to him. 

“You’ve certainly come on the right day—episode one of ‘Dorcas tries to woo the girl of her dreams.’”

_ ‘You’re too close!’  _ Sirius screams in his mind.  _ ‘How am I supposed to  _ not  _ fall in love with you when you’re whispering in my ear and your breath is warm on the back of my neck and if I turned my head we would be kissing and—’ _

“Look, she’s handing her phone over,” he says instead, and Remus moves away to rest his elbows on the table. 

“Would you look at that. It seems that _O_ _ peration: get Dorc a girlfriend _ has progressed past stage one,” Alice jokes. 

Sirius leans forward to look over Frank at her. “What’s stage two?”

“Make sure said girlfriend doesn’t find out about the cactus shrine.”

“...I don’t think I want to know.” 

“No, you really don’t.”

But now Dorcas is walking back over to them, and she’s beaming, and she holds out her phone excitedly. “I got her number! She saved her contact in my phone, too— _'Marlene; red heart emoji; parrot emoji.'_ ” 

The first one to start is Lily, and Remus follows soon after. When Alice, too, brings her hands together, Sirius joins in, and soon they’re all slow clapping. He can’t quite be sure whether this is a sincere slow clap or an ironic one, but, judging by the way Dorcas’s grin only grows wider, he’s going to go with the former. 

  
“Thank you, thank you!” She bows dramatically, and Sirius looks around him at the other smiling faces of booth seven, and he can’t help but think,  _ ‘Oh my god, I have friends.’  _


	8. Act One, Scene Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for food

“I’m home!” Sirius calls, unlocking the door. 

It takes a few seconds, but then, “In here!” comes James’s voice from the living room. 

(‘Living room’ is probably a bit of a stretch, really, because ‘living room’ implies that there are also other rooms, and the fact of the matter is that they have two bedrooms and then a kitchen with a couch and a TV in one half and a table in the other.) (James is, evidently, in the designated couch half of the kitchen.) (Sirius had originally suggested calling it the ‘lounge,’ and it is a sad sign of how determined James is to grow up at least partially that this suggestion did not become a reality.)

Bending down to unlace his combat boots, he shrugs his backpack off and leaves it there on top of James’s checkered Vans and a pair of black sneakers he doesn’t recognize but probably belongs to him. 

He walks past the fridge, glances at the schedule held up by the  _ J _ and  _ S _ magnets they got from Peter when they moved into the apartment, and makes a mental note that he has his first rehearsal for  _ Oliver  _ tonight. 

“What’cha watching?” he begins, noticing the flicker of the TV screen, and then stops dead. 

There are a few moments of silence before Sirius grabs one of Elvendork’s catnip mice off the floor and chucks it at his younger brother. “You fucker!”

Regulus sits up from where his head had previously been resting on James’s lap. “Hello to you, too, Sirius.”

“You came to visit! And you didn’t tell me!” 

“In my defense, I didn’t even know I was coming until, like, ten this morning. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision.” 

“Hey, they didn’t tell me, either. Just showed up at the door an hour or two ago, knocking like their life depended on it. I thought it was the police coming to tell me you’d been arrested. Or found dead in a ditch.”

“Shut up, James,” Sirius says, rolling his eyes. “Of course they didn’t tell  _ you—I’m _ his brother.”

“Well,  _ I’m _ the love of his life.” 

Regulus buries their face in James’s shoulder. “Why did I tell you that?” he groans, and Sirius glances between the two of them, blinking. 

“Wait. Are you two—”

“No,” they say in unison, which clears up absolutely nothing.

“...I think I’m missing something.” 

“You’re  _ definitely  _ missing something.”

(Yes, but what?)

He watches nervously as a significant look passes between them. It’s a conversation, really, but instead of words everything is communicated with eyebrow raises (mostly Regulus) and exaggerated winks (all James). 

Finally, Regulus lets out a huff of breath. “All right,” they say. “Fine!” 

James protests when Regulus climbs off the couch—not at the climbing off the couch part, but because he takes the blanket with him. The two stick their tongues out at each other, and Sirius feels his heart swell. He loves them both so fucking much, and he’s never been so glad that Reg managed to get out of that house, too. He’s not sure what he’d do without his little brother. 

The walk in silence towards Sirius’s bedroom, and Regulus immediately jumps onto the bed once the door is opened. They bounce slightly when their body hits the springy mattress, and they flop over onto their back to stare at the ceiling. 

“I came out to James,” he says, not bothering with pleasantries or preamble. Regulus never has been one for that—straight and to the point is the only way they really know how to do anything. 

“You dated James.”  _ Tact, Sirius,  _ he reprimands himself immediately inside his head.  _ Just because your brother is a conversation heathen you don’t necessarily have to stoop to their levels.  _

“Yes, I know I dated James. But… I’m not gay.” 

“Okay.” Sirius pauses, waiting to see if Regulus is going to elaborate further. They don’t, so he prompts, “Do you know what you are?”

“Yeah.” 

(So they’re doing this the hard way, are they? All right—Sirius can work with that.)

“I’m not gay,” Regulus says again. “I’m not pan or bi or any of those things. I’m… I’m asexual. And aromantic.” 

Sirius blinks. He takes this in. He nods. 

He says something that, in fifteen years, he will look back on and want to dunk his head in very cold water for. “But… James.”

“James.” Regulus nods, sighing heavily. “James is different. I don’t know how to explain it—I don’t love him anymore. But… I did. I used to. And I haven’t felt like that about anyone else, well, ever. Yeah.”

Before Sirius can say anything, Regulus starts talking again. “It’s like—what was it you used to say? In high school? ‘Having a crush on James Potter doesn’t make you gay. It makes you human.’ I loved James, but that doesn’t make me allo. Make sense?”

“Yeah. Wait, actually, one thing—so, James is the only person you’re ever loved? Romantically?” 

“Uh huh.”

“And you  _ told him _ this?”

Regulus brings his hands up, covering his face. “I  _ know _ . It was a mistake, okay? I should have known it would only inflate his ego even more. I feel like an idiot.”

“Yeah, because you  _ are _ an idiot.” Sirius reaches over, swatting them on the shoulder. “But at least you’re not as big of an idiot as the guy who knowingly and willingly flirted with his ex today.”

_ “What?!”  _

“Mm hmm. But that’s a story for another time.” Smirking, Sirius glances over his shoulder before beginning to walk backwards out of the room. 

“You  _ fucker _ !” 

Reg chases him all the (admittedly very short) way back to where James is sprawled on the couch, clearly making good use of his friends’ absence. Finally, Sirius can see what’s playing on the TV—it’s  _ Ocean’s Eleven _ , and it’s already at least a good half hour in. He and Regulus look at each other, identical smirks etched onto their faces. Together, they jump, and James yelps. 

“Oh, don’t be such a baby,” Regulus tells him jokingly, and there comes a muffled groan from where James’s face is smashed into the pillows. 

Sirius makes sure that James can actually breathe before he starts to make himself comfortable. He’s perched on the small of James’s back; Regulus is settled in the gap between James’s feet. 

“Is this really,” James laments, “how you want to treat your best friend?”

“Yes,” Sirius says, and smothers a laugh. 

“And you, Reggie—have you no respect for the love of your life?”

Regulus pretends to think for a moment, then, “No,” they say. 

The muscles in James’s back tense suddenly, but Sirius doesn’t think much of it. He should, really, because barely an instant later, James heaves himself over, tipping both Black brothers onto the floor. 

“Ouch,” Sirius says, pouting. “My ass hurts.”

Regulus has an unbelievably shit-eating grin on their face. “Loser.” 

“I thought you were on my side!”

“I’m on no one’s side but my own.” 

This is a mistake, and Regulus knows it. His eyes widen when James and Sirius look at each other, nodding, and lunge forward. There is only one weakness to Regulus Arcturus Black, and the two of them know it better than anyone else in the world. 

Because Regulus may be coolly confident with a sharp sense of humour, but they are also extremely ticklish. Their shrieks and laughs are interrupted by the occasional  _ ‘No!’  _ or  _ ‘Mercy!,’  _ but it does nothing to quench Sirius and James’s combined ruthlessness. They are unstoppable, and Regulus can do nothing to beat them. 

George Clooney is shouting about something onscreen, but the three young men tussling pay him no mind. The movie plays on, forgotten, and Sirius lets himself forget—just for a moment—that Remus or heartbreak or that fucking writing class exist at all. 

***

“So,” James says through a mouthful of chow mein, “How was the class?”

“It was good.”

Regulus raises an eyebrow. “‘Good?’ You sound like a kid coming home from school to overly inquisitive parents.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’d know all about that.” 

“Fuck off, they didn’t talk to you, either.”’

“Touché.” 

“Go on, Sirius,” James breaks in. “How was it?”

“It was better than last week, at least. Worse, too, I guess, but then it was better.”

“...Elaborate.”

He’s glad for the excuse to. He needs to talk to  _ someone _ , and therapy’s an obvious no because he doesn’t have the money and also he has a bad track record of scaring therapists away on the first session, so James and Regulus are kind of the only options. (He’s not kidding anyone. He’s been dying to tell the two of them, specifically, for like forever, but Regulus hasn’t visited in ages.) “Well, I found out why Remus broke up with me. And then I met up with his friends at Frankie’s, and apparently they’re  _ my  _ friends now, too, which is cool, because at the moment my only friends are, well, you guys. Oh, and I helped set Marlene up with a girl.” 

There is a pause as both Regulus and James look at him, taking in this information. “Okay,” James says. “Do I want you to tell me more?”

Sirius pokes at his rice with one chopstick. “I dunno.”

“I—um—you mentioned you made some new friends?” continues James. Regulus stifles a laugh, and Sirius has to admit that the phrase ‘make some new friends’ sounds more fitting for a conversation with a grade three than a university student. “What are they like?” 

“Well, there’s Dorcas—the one who’s into Marlene—and she’s, like, the most extroverted extrovert to ever extrovert. Then there’s Frank, who doesn’t talk much, and Mary, who talks even less, but Mary’s got dyed hair so she’s all right, I guess. Alice is pretty cool, too, and then there’s Lily, who’s pretty but terrifying. Oh, and Fabian, who seems to be allergic to  _ not  _ being a nice person, and Caradoc, who I’m almost positive is related to Angelia Jolie because his cheekbones are just  _ that sharp. _ And Remus, of course, but I’m sure I’ve told you guys enough about  _ him _ to last a lifetime.” 

When he’s met by only silence, he scrambles for something to say. “They all strike me as the kind of people who would wear ‘gay rights’ t-shirts unironically, which is sort of my only prerequisite when it comes to friendship. Our resident emo not included, of course, because I would never want to force them into anything that isn’t some sort of My Chemical Romance merchandise.”

Regulus looks down at the shirt he’s currently wearing—it’s got the  _ American Beauty/American Psycho  _ album cover on the front—and then back up at Sirius. “Actually, this is Fall Out Boy.”

“Same difference.”

“How dare you.” 

Laughing, James spears another piece of broccoli and gestures with it between the two of them. “Reg, you can’t exactly blame him for his ignorance around your obsolete music tastes.”

“Says the guy who listens to the fucking  _ Monkees _ —” 

“Fuck off! The Monkees were an  _ icon _ ; a _legend_ —”

“The Monkees are trash.” 

“ _ You’re  _ trash!”

“Whoa, there,” Sirius breaks in. “I dodged a bullet when my only two friends in the world had a friendly breakup instead of an unfriendly one, and the last thing I want is to find out that that bullet is actually a boomerang.” 

Regulus groans. “Okay, first of all, we’ve always spent like fifty percent of our time arguing about music, even while we were dating—which you’d know if you hadn’t started avoiding the two of us like the plague the instant we got together.”

“Shots fired,” James says under his breath, but he’s immediately silenced by a glare from Regulus. 

“Secondly—and more importantly—if you ever make another analogy  _ remotely  _ like that one, I  _ will  _ hurt you. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” Sirius assures them, but he’s struggling to hold back laughter. 

There’s a pause, and then Regulus crosses his arms, pouting. “What?” 

“Nothing.”

“You’re laughing.”

“Because you’re funny.”

“I’m not funny!”

“You’re  _ cute. _ ”

“I am not cute!”

“Yes, you are!”

Regulus turns on James once more. “James, am I cute?” Clearly, they think better of this, because they quickly add, “Wait, no, don’t answer that.”

“See, you’re cute! And you know it!”

“I give up!”

Sirius sits back in his chair. “You’ve lost, Reg. Admit it. And then get me a fortune cookie.”

“All right. Fine. I’ve lost. But I hope your fortune cookie tells you you’re going to get struck by lightning tomorrow.”

“Sweet; maybe I’ll get cool powers.”

“It doesn’t work like that, moron.” 

“Whatever you say.” 

For a moment, he thinks he’ll have to get the fortune cookies himself, because Reg isn’t going to, but then his little brother stands up and reaches into the brown paper bag on the counter. “Here,” they say, tossing the cookie at Sirius’s head. 

“Hey!” 

James gets a cookie, too, but his is placed on the table in front of him, not at all a threat to his health, well-being, and quite possibly his life. Sirius points this out, labeling it ‘favouritism,’ but Regulus only takes a bite of his cookie and calls him dramatic. 

“You first,” James says, nodding at Regulus, causing Sirius to gasp in betrayal. The other two pay him no mind, however, and Regulus clears his throat. 

“You will,” they say, “come into fair fortune or good will in the near future.” 

Almost immediately, James starts clapping. It’s tradition—after a fortune cookie reading comes the raucous applause. For them, it’s half the fun of ordering Chinese food. 

“All right, my turn.” James squints at the slip of paper in his hands. He holds it up to the light, and then, “Something will happen soon that will change how you look at the world.”

This time, Sirius and Regulus know to wait before they applaud. James always adds something funny after his fortunes, and they’re curious to see what it is he’ll come up with this time. 

“What,” he says, after a brief moment of thought, “will my glasses prescription change or something?”

Sirius looks at Regulus, and they both laugh as they clap. It’s cheesy, entirely too predictable, and basically the most James thing possible. Neither of them knows what really caused them to want to befriend James all those years ago in—oh fuck, it was grade four, wasn’t it?—but it sure as hell wasn’t his sense of humour. 

“Sirius?” It’s said like a question, and Sirius is quick to answer. “On it, Reg,” he says, and breaks his cookie in half with both hands. (Well, he says ‘half;’ it’s really more like a quarter and then the other three.)

He reads out his lucky numbers first, without even looking at the fortune itself—that’s  _ his  _ tradition; he’s the only one of the three of them who does it. “Three, thirteen, seventeen, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, forty.” 

“Isn’t that, like, the fifth time in a row you’ve gotten thirteen?” Regulus says. “That’s gotta mean something.”

“Shut up,” Sirius tells them, and finally he lets his eyes find the tiny lettering that is his fortune. 

Without letting himself hear the words in his head first, he reads them out loud. “You have forgiven easily in the past; it is time to do so again.”

There’s a silence. What  _ is  _ this? It’s not a fortune; it’s a statement. Advice, maybe, but even that’s stretching it a little.

“Well.” James says, and claps, Regulus following quickly after, but Sirius can tell it’s strained. They’re all obviously thinking about the same thing—Remus. 

Somewhere in his head, he knows that this doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It’s a fortune cookie, after all—what does it know? But… maybe it does mean something. He’s not sure which he’s hoping for. 

Seemingly just for something to say, James asks, “Don’t you have rehearsal tonight?”

Sirius is, in a way, glad for the excuse to stand up. “Yeah,” he says, “at seven-thirty—which is twenty minutes from now—so I should probably get going.”

“Probably,” agrees Regulus, as they begin to clear the table. “Need a ride?”

“Nah, I can take the bus,” Sirius begins, and then stops. “Wait, why are you offering? You don’t have a car.”

“Um—”

“Reg, is there something you aren’t telling me?” 

“...Maybe?”

“You have a  _ car _ ?”

“I mean, technically it’s a rental, so no, but—”

“Whatever.” Sirius doesn’t need to hear any more. “Yes, please, take me to rehearsal.”

James makes a noise of protest. “What, and leave me here alone?” 

“Yes, James; you can survive on your own. You’re an adult.”

“I don’t  _ feel  _ like one.”

“Or act like one,” Sirius adds under his breath, which earns him a definitive  _ not helping _ look from Regulus. 

“You’ll be fine as long as you don’t burn the house down. Goodbye.”

Sirius grabs his script and his blue hoodie with the picture of a rubber duck on it from his bedroom, and when he walks back through the kitchen to the front door, Regulus looks him up and down once and hands him his backpack. 

The only sound that accompanies their walk down the hall and subsequent elevator ride is the faint jingling of the key ring in Regulus’s hand. It’s not until they’re in the car and pulling out of the parking lot that Regulus says, “And you’re all right with this?”

“All right with what?”

“Me being… you know.”

“A total asshole? No. Aroace? Yeah, of course. I’m your brother. I’m here for you, Reg.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

(Sirius ignores the ‘I guess.’) “Is James cool about it? Because if he isn’t, I’ll kick his ass.”

“No, he’s fine. He’s great. He made a couple jokes about himself having raised my expectations so much I could never be with anyone else, but that’s just James.” 

“That’s just James,” Sirius repeats. “And you know that you can always talk to me, right? If anyone tries to mess with your head?”

“Yeah. Now, enough about me. Let’s talk about the guy who ‘knowingly and willingly flirted with his ex’ earlier.”

Damn. He’s hoped Regulus had forgotten about that. 

For a moment, Sirius is trapped between the want to stubbornly refuse and the need to actually talk about his feelings. He settles on the latter, but not until they’re close enough to the rec centre where rehearsals are held that he knows he can hop out of the car and walk the rest of the way if need be. “He’s just… he’s everything, you know?

“And I know that he doesn’t want to get back together, and I know that we really shouldn’t even if he did. But he’s  _ Remus _ . And I’m constantly flip-flopping back and forth between wanting to be his friend because we’ll never be anything more than that, and…”

“And what?”

“Being so in love with him it hurts.”

Regulus glances away from the road ahead for a split second, eyes flickering over Sirius's face, their expression unreadable. “Sounds like a you problem,” they say finally. 

“Reg?”

“Yeah?”

“Not helping.”

“Sorry.” 

“I just—my eyes basically turn to hearts whenever I look at him, but it also hurts, you know? Because he broke up with me, obviously, but also because today I found out that the _reason_ he broke up with me was that he kissed someone else, so obviously that’s kind of shitty, and I don’t know how to feel about any of this because he’s basically the nicest person in the world, and can one mistake really change who a person is? But he also hasn’t tried to make up or anything, and we’re apparently pretending we’ve never met, and did I mention he’s got a fucking _tattoo_ _of the Sirius constellation_ that he never told me about, and… this is my stop.”

Regulus pulls over, wincing a little as the tire grates against the curb, and then turns to meet Sirius’s gaze. “So, it sounds like you’re not in a great place right now,” he says. “And I get that. You know this goes both ways, right? You can always talk to me, too.”

“I know. Love you.” He grabs his backpack, making sure it’s got everything he needs in it—phone, script, highlighter and pencil for notes and directions, bottle of red Gatorade—and closes the door. 

The window rolls down slightly, and Sirius watches his own reflection disappear with it and be replaced by his brother’s faint smile. “Love you, too,” Regulus says, and then he is gone. 

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me on tumblr: [wonder-womans-ex](https://wonder-womans-ex.tumblr.com/)
> 
> asks are always open :)


End file.
